Hackathon to develop new rehabilitation technologies

Would you like to be involved in finding new solutions to support people’s rehabilitation from illness or injury? Perhaps you already have some great ideas but are not sure how to take them forward?

Eastern AHSN is partnering with Health Enterprise East to deliver the Medtech Accelerator Health Hack programme, a series of three free events designed to bring people with different backgrounds and skill sets together to stimulate innovation, meet unmet clinical needs, and generate commercial benefit.

The first of these events takes place over 19-20 October in Norwich, with a focus on rehabilitation technologies. People with ideas for solutions or who have identified problem areas, will work alongside a range of clinical, technical and business experts to develop initial concepts into successful pitches. At the end of the event at least one concept will be selected to go in front of the Medtech Accelerator investment committee, with the chance of winning up to £125k in funding.

What are rehabilitative technologies?

Rehabilitative technologies are any technologies that help people recover function after injury or illness, including musculoskeletal, neurological and cardiovascular rehabilitation.

This could include devices, diagnostics, software or eHealth, for example:

specialised robotics

wearable sensors

prosthetics and orthotic devices

virtual reality/gaming technology

assistive technology (mobility and disability aids)

smartphone and tablet apps

computer simulations

motion analysis

Who should attend?

Idea or problem owners: We are seeking up to ten people from NHS organisations in the East of England to attend the event, bringing their ideas for innovations around rehabilitative technologies to help meet unmet clinical needs. We also welcome people who can articulate a clear problem area but who don’t yet have a solution.

Support actors: As some of our idea or problem owners may be from purely clinical backgrounds with no substantial experience of product design or development, the event will also invite a range of clinical, technical and business experts to work alongside them. These people will provide assistance in developing ideas and guidance on how to assess the market opportunity, identify a development approach, select delivery partners and meet funding and investment needs. In particular, we need:

Clinical stakeholders, subject-matter experts, and other NHS staff

Software/hardware developers

Academics/researchers

Regulatory experts/consultants

Business/marketing/strategy consultants

What will happen at the event?

At an informal gathering on the evening before the main event, idea owners will pitch their ideas or explain their challenge areas to the rest of the group. At the start of the following day, support actors will then form themselves into diverse teams around the idea owners they would like to support for the rest of the day. Together teams will then workshop each idea into a more complete proposal which will be pitched to a panel of judges.

The progress of each team will be monitored and facilitated by a professional facilitator, who will help to guide the process. Discussions will be held under a code of conduct based on the Chatham House Rule.

The judges will pick one or more of the teams to go forward and pitch their idea to the Medtech Accelerator Investment panel with a chance of winning up to 125,000 funding to develop the idea. The remaining projects will all be offered the opportunity of further mentoring and support from HEE and the Eastern AHSN.